Cursed by Fire (34 page)

She threw herself into the moment, lifting herself to meet him as best she could from her position, working hard to please him as he had pleased her. She didn’t
know much about any of this, but she did know he hadn’t come close to feeling those brilliant moments of pleasure that he had made her feel … and it was very necessary that he do so. At least it was to her mind. She wanted to do anything she could to make him happy. She desperately wanted to make him happy.

In the end she didn’t have to work that hard or that long at it. He devolved into short, hurried, slamming thrusts, sweat shining on his skin, his breathing ragged. He released a mighty groan, thrust into her hard and gritted his teeth through the savagery of his orgasm. He held himself to her, everything seemingly suspended, and then suddenly he released, collapsing on her, gasping for breath.

On a growl he said, “Gods, that felt good!” More good than a man like him deserved, he thought heatedly as his pleasure-saturated body grew more and more lax. He rolled away from her, not wanting to crush her under the weight of his heavy body. But no sooner had he done so than he was ringing an arm around her and hauling her up and over, using her like a blanket to cover his sated body. She was warm and sleek and beautiful with her tousled hair falling all about her pretty face. Sex looked very good on her.

“Oh no! Look at the sky!” she gasped suddenly. And just like that she was off him and on her feet, her hair flying. He watched her naked body move as she scrambled for her cloak and covered herself with it. “Hanit said the boy who watches your rooms would be back at first light. I must go before he returns.”

He knew it was true, that it was dangerous for her to linger, but he was loath to let her go. He moved out of the bed and came up to her, drawing her slowly into his arms, bending her back as he caught her tense mouth against his. He kissed her until she relaxed, until she
melted into his arms. Then finally he lifted his head and gazed down at her wet mouth and dazed eyes.

“I had to do that. I needed it to take me through the day. Now, let me make sure the boy isn’t there and then you can go.”

He reached for his pants, pulling them on quickly. She watched as he left the room and then waited with hurried breaths for his return. If Grannish were to find out …

He came back shortly. “The way is clear. Hurry, now,” he said, knowing as well as she did what it would mean if they were caught. She jumped up to give him a fleeting kiss, then ran from the room, naked save for her cloak. Luckily she did not have far to travel and the household was still asleep. In the future he would remember to be kinder to her clothing … provided she didn’t look so damn good in them.

Gods, he thought heatedly, what kind of trouble had he found?

It was a slow time coming, but Dethan could feel Selinda’s trust of him mutating from a trust of necessity—meaning she had no choice—to a genuine trust. An understanding within her that she was safe with him. The proof of it was in the very nature of their lovemaking. It seemed to run a wide gamut of types, from something tender and gentle … to something wild and uncontrollable.

Nothing made that clearer than the night she did not come to him at the appointed hour and did not send Hanit with word. It worried him more than he could possibly have expected from himself. It made him wary of his growing attachment to her, made him aware of how dangerous attachment for either of them could truly be. They did not have the luxury of fanciful feelings.

Not that he was capable of such things. No one had ever been able to accuse him of being the fanciful type. Certainly not if they wanted to keep all their essential appendages.

Dethan was left to assume, then, that Selinda had developed one of her headaches and had simply forgotten
to send him word. It worried him, how often she succumbed to these things. It worried him that they were so bad she was crippled by them, unable to move from her room. He would have to discuss with her going to see a mem from one of the healing temples. Or perhaps she did call on mems and these headaches continued in spite of them. Now, that was certainly something to worry about.

Left at odd ends, he had no choice but to go to sleep, letting himself heal once again from his brutal nightly torment.

It was two hours before dawn when he heard the door to his room open. He jolted out of sleep in an instant, flying out of the bed with a dagger in his hand, gained from its hiding place beneath one of his pillows. It was dark and he was poised to strike, barely stopping himself in time when he realized who had entered the room.

“Selinda! For the sake of the gods!” he ejected. “I nearly ran you through! What are you doing skulking about at this hour of the—”

His tirade jerked to a halt when her hands suddenly shot out and caressed him hard up the front of his body, starting at the tautness of his belly and running over the wall of his chest. Her fingers were splayed wide, the touch fast and hungry. She leaned in and he instinctively brought his hands low on her back, catching hold of her as she rested against him. It felt as though she were somehow desperate … or maybe just famished. In any event, her need was overpowering as she dropped her mouth to the skin of his warm chest, her breath exhaling hotly against his nipple.

“Touch me,” she breathed, her lips damp against his skin. She inhaled shakily and kept her lashes lowered so he couldn’t see her eyes, couldn’t fathom what was driving her to come at him out of nowhere like this.

“Has something happened?” he asked her, trying to
keep himself above the reactions he was having at the feel of her nearness and her touches.

“No,” she said, finally lifting her lashes and looking up into his eyes. “I only wanted … wanted you.”

“Why did you not come to me earlier?”

“I thought to let you rest. Let you be free of me and my demands of you for a night. Only … I failed. I couldn’t stay away.”

He couldn’t help but smile at that. He drew her forehead to his lips and kissed her, inhaling the fine scent of her. He had missed her. Day after day he could not touch her in public, not like he might have wished to. So that left him only the nights. Nights when he could do whatever he willed … and she always let him.

And here she was, telling him she was just as addicted to the drug of their lovemaking as he was. He caught her head in his hand and fiercely brought her mouth to his. He kissed her fast and hard, deep and wet and needful. Kissed her until they were both drawing hard for breath.

“I do not need to be relieved of you,” he said huskily. “In truth, you are my relief from the pressures of the day.”

“And you mine,” she admitted before lifting onto her toes in order to catch his mouth again.

This time as he kissed her he dragged her up hard against his body. He could then feel the looseness of her clothing and the freedom of the body beneath. She wore only the thinnest of shifts beneath her cloak. It made him tense even as it aroused him to have such free access to her lush young body. She had moved through the castle dressed like this. True, it had only been a short distance, but still … anyone could have come upon her. Could have been able to see through the scant material to the treasures beneath. The idea made him clench his teeth a brief instant … but then she was back to demanding
kisses from him, dragging him into the act of paying attention to what was truly important in that moment.

He pulled the tie of her cloak, sending it sheeting back off her shoulders and down to the floor in a pile near her ankles. It left her standing barely dressed in that thin white shift with only delicate touches of lace on it to provide any sort of protection from his devouring eyes.

“You will not come to me dressed like this again,” he said gruffly as he ringed a hand around the back of her neck. “Anyone could have seen you.”

“I … I was careful,” she said. “I’m sorry. If you do not like me like this, of course I won’t—”

“No! I did not say I didn’t like you like this,” he said, giving her a squeeze and a shake as he tried to rein in emotions he couldn’t seem to get control of. He took hold of her hand then and brought it to the thrusting heat of his erection, wrapping her fingers around his naked state. “Tell me again I do not like it.”

“But …”

“What I do not like is the possibility that another might see you and like you just as well.”

“Oh. Oh!” she said, finally grasping his meaning. His jealousy. In the dark he saw a sly little smile slip across her lips. “I see,” she said. Then her hands grew active … hungrier … as they coasted over his naked flesh. She stroked his engorged staff with a great deal of intent. Her thumb circled the head of it again and again at the end of each such stroke. He groaned and found himself blindly thrusting into her hand, his own hands gripping at the thin cotton and lace on her body. It took every ounce of willpower he owned to keep from ripping it from her, destroying it in its entirety and, along with it, any possibility of her making it back to her rooms in anything other than her cloak. Again. The idea of her
moving naked through the halls of the fortress only enflamed him further.

He gripped her wrist, removing her torturous touch from his body just long enough to strip her of her flimsy clothing, exposing her to the room and his eyes. The fire was not lit and he felt deprived without it. Not that he needed or desired the heat of it, but he needed and desired the sight of her in firelight. Instead he had to make do with his hands, shaping them to the curves and valleys of her body in wide sweeps in order to reconstruct her in his mind, to help him remember the fine softness of her skin, the fullness of her breasts, the lush curves of her hips as they flared out from her narrow waist. She was perfect. In light or in darkness he had never known such erotic perfection or such unmitigated craving as he felt when it came to her.

He suddenly turned her hard about, pulling her back to his chest, dragging her backside into the lee of his hips. The weight of his erection came to rest against her and he pressed forward until he was perfectly nestled against her behind, drawing wetly into the small of her back, where the tip of it touched her. He dragged her hair off her back and over her shoulder, baring the line of her neck and shoulder on the right side to the play of his mouth. Within moments his teeth were scraping along the exposed skin there and he heard her gasp in a small breath. Then he felt her pressing back against him.

No. Rubbing back against him. She was using her body to touch him where her hands were not. Then she thrust her hands between their bodies and used them as well. The fingers and palm of her left hand crawled down his thigh and the fingers and palm of the right cupped the sac beneath his rod and molded the malleable flesh.

Dethan growled against her neck. She was determined
to be bold and forthright, and he would not gainsay her. Then he was equally forthright and took the sweet flesh of her breasts into his hands. Oh, how he needed her, needed to feel her like this and more. His craving for her nearly overwhelmed him.

But he denied any emotional aspect to this and focused on the physical. She was utterly delectable and he must have her. Must have her before her wicked hands made an overeager idiot of him. As it was, he could hardly think straight. When, he wondered, had she gained the upper hand in the physicality of their relationship? Oh yes, she had been too quick a study by far for the peace of his mind.

He coasted a hand down the soft plane of her belly until his fingers were crawling through the thatch of curls hiding her wet, heated flesh from him. But he found her easily enough and quickly enough, and she moaned softly as he did. He unerringly found that sensitive button of flesh hiding within her folds and slowly and surely swirled his touch against it. Her moans grew louder, her body active. She stood on the tips of her toes and pressed back into him harder. He persisted—his touch against her clit and her nipple, tugged between his fingers, while she turned her head, reached back and engaged his mouth in a wicked kiss.

She cried out into his mouth, and feeling fevered with lust just from hearing her, he tore his mouth from hers, turned her toward the nearest wall and bent her forward at the waist. He nudged her feet apart, widening her stance, and placed her hand against the wall.

Selinda followed every action willingly. He had shown her much in their time together, and though this was new and strange and unpredictable, she knew he would show her pleasure. He always did. She felt herself becoming open and exposed and knew instantly how he planned to take her. And in the next instant he was,
thrusting into her hard from behind, filling her so full she could only gasp for breath. Her knees went weak at the raw pleasure of it, but he was there, holding her, seemingly with ease, seemingly not half as affected as she was.

But that thought was belied a moment later when he released a guttural sound of pleasure, as if he had been waiting so long to be where he now was and had finally found relief.

“I mean to take you hard,” he ground out in warning … or was it promise? She didn’t know and didn’t care. It was more than welcome either way.